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We defy article 155

1. The invoking of Article 155 by the Rajoy cabinet is a coup d’etat in Catalonia. This attack aims to dissolve an elected government and impose elections on an autonomous region, ignoring the democratic mandate of October 1 and the appeals for dialogue. It is an attack that is also directed at the public media in Catalonia that have already stated that this is a violation of "freedom of expression and information" and that they will not comply.

It is a coup d’etat that comes on top of the attacks in the run up to October 1 and on the day itself, of the persistent deployment of the police under which we live; the demagogy of the last week against those in the education sector who have been a spearhead of the movement; and, of course, in the imprisonment of Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez, presidents of Omnium and ANC who we support.

The response to this series of attacks is a mobilized Catalonia, like almost half a million people who yesterday filled the center of Barcelona.

2. It is on the streets and through popular self-organization that we can make the right to self-determination effective, only from there can we withstand the threats and repressions of the regime. Not recognizing the authority of the PP to manage the media, the police forces or the Catalan Parliament requires a leap forward in the mass civil disobedience we have experienced in the last month. To make this leap, we will have to respond consistently against Article 155; through mobilizations, general strikes, collecting funds to pay fines collectively, developing economic alternatives ... A range of initiatives that allow us not to leave anyone behind, to overcome the obstacles that we live in and to counteract the strategy of fear.

3. Far from the return to "normality" that the regime claims to seek, the suspension of the autonomy of the Catalan institutions attempts to establish a constitutional restoration with a reactionary effect. In the face of this reaction, he will find a massive rejection in Catalonia where disobedience will be organized and large alliances outside Catalonia will be built to avoid isolation. To build alliances with the peoples of Europe that suffer from the authoritarian turn of the EU and its governments, but also to rearm a democratic anti-regime block across the Spanish State that can infect the constituent impulse everywhere.

4. It is now an urgent task to make the sovereignty of Catalonia real to avoid constitutional restoration in the authoritarian framework and not to retreat in the democratic challenge emanating from October 1. This implies overcoming talk that independence is easy and collectively assuming the challenges we have in advance. We believe that the way of materializing this sovereignty is opening up a popular constituent process, that those who defended the referendum will also be the protagonists of the new Republic. A constituent process that is not the mere drafting of a constitution, but a period to develop new institutions which grow from popular self-organization, which generate counter-powers to overcome blackmail, but also that allows the field of sovereignty to widen socially.

Disobedience and self-organization are our institutions; from them we open a constituent process on which to build the Republic.

P.S.

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